


Not Gonna Write You a Love Song

by mjules



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Canon Queer Character, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:28:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/pseuds/mjules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Adam can never write a song about this."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All the Money, Fame, and Fortune Never Could Compete

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snow/gifts), [astolat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/gifts).



> Disclaimer: Though some of the events described in this story are based on actual events, this account is entirely fictional. This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that all of the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.

cover art by kristin  


 

 

** _May 31st, 2009_ **

 

Adam can never write a song about this. For one thing, it would have to start out with eyes meeting across a crowded room, and that’s so cliche that the fact that it’s actually happening makes Adam feel a little sick, like he ate too much cotton candy and then got on the Tilt-a-Whirl. Or maybe that’s just the butterflies in his stomach. And when’s the last time he had butterflies like this?

 

The guy looks vaguely familiar, but Adam can’t tell if it’s because he actually knows who the guy is or because he looks a little like that really pretty blond bottom in the European porn that his brother bought him as a joke last Chanukah. And if he’s as hung as that guy on the DVD was, Adam might be doing his best to get the guy to a much less crowded room, stat.

 

He’s pretty sure that part wouldn’t work in a song either.

 

“Enjoying the party?” The smirk on Pink’s face spells trouble, but it makes Adam smile all the same. “Or just enjoying the scenery?”

 

Adam can feel his eyebrow arch and can’t help the evil grin that just kind of... takes over his expression.

 

“It’s nice scenery.”

 

Pink snorts into her drink and moves on with a thumbs-up _go get ’im_ gesture.  If only.

 

The porn star double has moved on, and now Adam doesn’t see him anywhere. He’s trying to peer around a cluster of people when someone bumps into him and his “make it strong, hm? Thanks” gin and tonic sloshes all over the sleeve of the suit jacket he’s wearing. As he assures the mortified young intern that everything’s all right, it’ll come right out (_haha_), he’s thinking: this part _definitely_ isn’t going in the song that he’s not going to be writing.

 

His phone buzzes in his hip pocket and he’s half-annoyed, half-grateful for the distraction.  He fishes it out and thumbs it on, smiling at the name on his display.  Possibly the only person he’d like to hear from right now.  Well, one of only four.

 

_“Bored yet?”_

Adam turns his phone around quickly to snap a picture of himself with his eyes crossed and his tongue hanging out, looking like he’d rather be shot in the head than to be standing where he is right now.  Which is… almost true.  He attaches it to a text message and types in under it, _“Like hell.”_ 

 

He shoves his phone back in his pocket while he’s waiting for Kris to answer and goes back to his fruitless search for the boy-next-door porn star double.  It’s the most boring party he’s had to attend yet, and he’s really not sure why he’s here except that his publicist said it would be a “good idea.”  To Adam, a “good idea” means somewhere that he can have fun, mingle, be charming, maybe a little outrageous.  Apparently to his publicist, a “good idea” means somewhere he has to pretend to be well-behaved and sip calmly on one too many G&amp;T’s and wish he smoked just to have something to do with his hands.

 

The real reason the publicist sent him to this party, and he knows it, is that there are film people here.  And Adam was stage, not film, but his name is still associated with theatrics and now he’s got a singing career and a record deal, and a hit track on a good soundtrack could be damn good for him.

 

But to actually meet any film people, he would have to move.  And talk.  And mingle.  Which should be easier than it is.  He hasn’t been shy since tenth grade and not _seriously_ shy since fifth, and he can’t figure out what’s got his feet glued to the floor now.  Maybe just the fact that he knows that what he _really_ wants to do is go looking for the only interesting person he’s noticed all evening, and that his publicist will kill him if he confesses that the reason he didn’t meet anyone was because he was too busy looking to get laid.

 

Of course, confessing that he didn’t actually talk to anyone probably isn’t going to look too good on his record, either.

 

His phone buzzes again and he’s fully grateful for the distraction this time, looking forward to Kris’s reply to his text.

 

_“Found any tail worth chasing yet?”_

He’s confused for a second, on the verge of sending a playfully scolding (but genuinely shocked) reply when he realizes this text is not from Kris at all; it’s from his brother.

 

_“Maybe so. Tall, blond, boy-next-door. Looks like one of the guys on that Eurococks DVD you gave me.”_

Neil’s reply is almost instant, and Adam can’t help wrinkling his nose, though he’s laughing too.

 

_“…Everywhere?”_

_“I don’t know yet. Want me to tell you when I do?”_

Adam hasn’t even hit Send yet when he gets another message.

 

_“DON’T TELL ME.”_

 

He takes a second to backspace and amend his text-in-progress.

 

_“I don’t know yet. I’ll send you pictures when I do!”_

“I’m pretty sure it’s considered rude to spend all your time at a party _texting_.” 

 

Adam jumps at the voice behind him, but he recognizes it before he turns, so he’s already smiling by the time he throws himself into Kris’s arms.

 

“Oh my God, I didn’t realize you were going to be here too!”  Clutching Kris’s shoulders turns into a playful punch, and he scolds, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

Kris shrugs, looking embarrassed but pleased, the tips of his ears tinged pink and his smile so wide it looks like it hurts.  “We weren’t sure we were coming at first.  Katy was shopping for the perfect pair of shoes up until the last minute.”

 

“She finally found some, I guess.”  Adam looks around again, this time looking mostly for Katy and not for the hottie who got away.  _Mostly_. 

 

“Yeah.  For the wrong dress.”  Kris sighs.  “So then we had to go buy the dress that went with the new shoes.”

 

Adam laughs.  “I approve.”  Then there’s Katy, looking abso-fucking-lutely _adorable_, and he grabs her in a bear hug too.  “All truly great ensembles are built around good accessories,” he tells her, and she sticks her tongue out at Kris in an _I-told-you-so_ gesture.

 

“Speaking of accessories,” Katy says in the tone of voice Adam has come to dread.  It usually means she’s hatching a plan.  “Where’s your arm candy?  I mean, you’re officially _out_ now, aren’t you?”

 

Adam adopts a haughty kind of air and says, “As if I would ever show up with someone who could potentially outshine me.”  Then he laughs and shakes his head.  “As if I was ever _not_ out.”

 

They’re all laughing now, because it was just so ridiculous every time 19E ran another “damage control” press release, talking about how Adam’s kissyface drag pictures were “part of a play he was working on.”  It got so bad that Kris had joked one night—way too late and too tired to be making any kinds of decisions—about lending him Katy so that he could have an adulterous scandal instead of a gay one.

 

“You’re just trying to garner sympathy so you can beat me,” Adam had joked.  “I know!  Why don’t you get Katy to lend me _you?_”

 

Kris had choked on his drink—just plain Sprite, which made their current giddiness that much more embarrassing—and Adam had laughed so hard he was gasping for air.  The next day, still a little groggy, doing his best to save some energy for the Idol performance, Adam had taken a very strange call from Kris.

 

“I’m sorry,” Kris had blurted, and Adam was way too tired to try to figure out what all this was about.  Had Kris done something the night before that he just didn’t remember…?  “I shouldn’t have implied that being gay was like adultery.  It’s not.”

 

Adam’s jaw dropped open and laughed before he could censor the reaction.  “I never thought you meant that,” he assured Kris.  “As far as the press is concerned, they’re both scandals.  One of them just happens to be true.”

 

“I know, but….”

 

Adam had smiled, feeling soft and warm all over that Kris was so concerned—so _aware_, even.  “You’re forgiven,” Adam told him, and he could almost _feel_ Kris's smile.

 

And now Adam’s feeling that same soft warmth, standing there laughing, his arm around Katy, and watching Kris’s face light up with mirth.  Suddenly the party doesn’t seem like such a waste of time and he’s full of new energy. 

 

“Whaddya say we see if we can find a dance floor in this place?”  Adam’s almost bouncing, Katy tucked against his side, and Kris laughs.

 

“Okay, but if we do, you’re giving me my wife back.”

 

They do dance, and Adam doesn’t exactly give Katy back—“He dances better than you,” she tells Kris, but he looks so crestfallen she dances with both of them at the same time—but it’s awesome and Adam thinks he could live forever on the high of the laughter as they tangle up and stumble into each other until there’s a perfect little bump and grind and Katy is suddenly the very giddy jelly in an Adam-and-Kris sandwich.

 

They’re still giggling, still a little unsteady on their feet, as they exit the dance floor to raucous applause, and they take exaggerated bows, Kris looking just a little awkward but ecstatic and Adam thinking he hasn’t had this much fun since the AI season ended, though that hasn’t been so long ago now. 

 

They’re instantly pressed in on by round-bellied men in suits with martinis and scotches, all of them regarding Kris and Allen with a kind of gleam in their eyes that means _money_ and _contracts_ and _publicity_, and Adam’s thinking that maybe his publicist won’t kill him after all when he sees a flash of blond hair by the patio doors.

 

And it’s not like that cute guy he saw thirty minutes ago was the only blond at the party, but Adam thinks he remembers those shoulders too, and he’s wriggling his way out of conversations like an eel getting through a fishnet before he can even think twice about it.

 

He hopes he doesn’t look too eager, like a clumsy little puppy, but his heart’s beating double-time already and all he can see is the guy’s tuxedo-clad back disappearing onto the patio.

 

_Settle down,_ he tells himself.  _You don’t even know if he’s gay._  But that’s a silly caution, because Adam’s gaydar has always been pretty darn good except for one or two lesbians who totally slipped by unnoticed, and he blames that on the fact that he wasn’t interested.

 

There’s no one on the patio when he finally gets through the doors, and he panics, looking for any way the guy might have escaped.  Maybe he’s not much on parties and was trying to find a discreet way of leaving early.  Maybe he was already meeting someone for a tryst and now he’s—

 

“Hi,” a voice says behind him, and Adam was _so right_, this guy is so gay, and so very much the boy next door that if Adam looked up the phrase in the dictionary, it would have his wholesome, blond-haired, blue-eyed picture next to the entry with that sweet, shy smile.

 

“H-hi,” Adam says, and he could kick himself for not having anything more interesting to say.  He’s been caught, though, and now he’s doing his best to come up with a legitimate excuse for having chased the guy out here.  “I, um… do you have a cigarette?”

 

“Sorry,” he says, and there’s that smile again—just a little crooked, and it makes Adam’s heart lurch kind of sideways in his chest.  “I don’t smoke.”

 

“Neither do I, really.  I just… that party was getting a little….”

 

“You seemed like you were having a good time,” the guy says, and the smile gets wider so that Adam can see teeth now, and fuck, he’s never been turned on by a guy’s _teeth_ before.

 

“Ah.”  Adam thinks he can feel himself blushing, and he hopes it comes off as _cute_ rather than _awkward_.  Or if it’s awkward, maybe at least this guy _likes_ awkward.  “So you saw…?”

 

There’s a laugh, open and genuine if still a little self-conscious, and Adam wants to know his name _right now_ so he can start imagining how it sounds when it’s whispered—or screamed.

 

“You were pretty hard to miss.”  There’s something in his tone right there that zings right up Adam’s spine and tells him _yes_, this is reciprocal, and _yes_, he’s getting some.

 

“Adam,” he says, reaching out his hand for a shake.  He intentionally leaves off the last name, because after months of publicity, he can’t take a chance on being unknown to people even if they don’t watch _Idol_. 

 

“Lance.”  Adam’s already mentally rolling the name over in his mind, and he thinks that _Lance_ is going to sound best in a hoarse shout.  He can live with that. 

 

Lance’s hand is warm and dry, and it slides just right against Adam’s palm.  It’s a firm grip, but Adam thinks he can take the chance—and if he’s wrong, well, it’s gonna suck.  But he’s sure he’s not wrong.  He turns their hands so that the back of Lance’s is facing up and he leans over, giving Lance plenty of time to pull away.  He doesn’t—and Adam can’t help his smirk because damn, Neil always says gaydar is made up, but Adam _knows_ better—and Adam leans over the last few inches and kisses the skin just below Lance’s wrist.

 

Lance’s fingers twitch just lightly in his grasp, but he’s still not trying to pull away, and Adam takes the chance further than he’d originally intended, turning Lance’s hand over again to kiss the palm.

 

“It’s nice to meet you,” Lance says, and it would sound prim if not for the breathlessness around the edges, and Adam can’t help laughing. 

 

“Do you mind if I sit?” Adam asks, gesturing to the bench Lance is perched on.  Lance scoots over to give him room, and Adam sits.  He would have made a joke about kneeling at Lance’s feet all night, but he gets the feeling that the hand-kissing was as far as he can push the potentially-corny gestures in a short period before he starts losing credibility.  He does, however, sit just a little too close.  On purpose.

 

“Your girlfriend isn’t going to come looking for you in a minute and beat me over the head, is she?”

 

Adam gives Lance a strange look at this question.  “My…?  Oh!  The girl I was dancing with!  No.  She’s married to the other guy.  They’re just my friends.”  He smiles winningly. “I’ve never even had a girlfriend.”

 

Lance looks relieved, and Adam can’t help asking.

 

“Has that ever happened to you?”

 

“Assault by angry girlfriend?”  Lance laughs, a short burst of sound, and Adam is instantly charmed.  “Once.  In college.”  Lance is staring at the ground in front of them, but he’s smiling.  “I swear I didn’t know he even _had_ a girlfriend.  If I had, I never would have had my hands down his pants at a college party.  On the couch.  In the living room.”

 

Now Adam’s the one who’s laughing, though he thinks the look on his face might well be called “delighted horror.”  It’s such a Jerry Springer moment, but he can’t imagine this young man next to him being anything but painfully honest.  It’s possibly even more appealing than those even, white teeth that Adam has been fantasizing about on his skin since he saw Lance grin a minute ago.

 

“Wow, that sounds… bad.”

 

“It was.”  Lance looks up at the sky and then cuts his eyes over to Adam, and Adam’s brain short-circuits.  “So bad.”

 

Then there’s that smile, and Adam is leaning toward him before he even really knows what he’s doing.  He stops halfway, surprised at himself, waiting to see how Lance will react.

 

“You know,” Lance says, and he’s leaning too, now.  “I usually end up talking politics at these things.”  His mouth curves up, one corner higher than the other, and his eyes go half-lidded.  “With lesbians.”  He’s closer now, and Adam may have stopped breathing.  “I haven’t been laid in _months._”

 

“Fuck, you know how to sweet-tal—_mmph_.”

 

Adam grabs the edge of the bench they’re sitting on so he won’t just climb into Lance’s lap, but damn, the man knows how to kiss.  It’s like he’s starving, and Adam’s the best thing he’s tasted in his entire life, and it’s full of gentle nibbles and deep licks and the happiest, hottest whimpery noises Adam has ever heard _ever_, and that’s including in high quality porn.

 

“Oh, _fuck_.”

 

Adam feels the words against his mouth more than he actually hears them, and he nods, dazed.  “How long do you have to stay here?”

 

“Here?”

 

“At the party?  How—”

 

“Oh.  Um.  I don’t know.  I can’t—I just—I need—can I, please…?”

 

Adam is pretty sure that finding stammering sexy means he’s _gone_, and he wonders how hard Kris would kick his ass if he ditched the party _right now_ to take Lance back to his apartment and finish this somewhere they’re not likely to get arrested.

 

“Yeah,” he says instead, and they’re kissing again, and this time clutching the bench isn’t enough to stop Adam from straddling Lance’s thighs, and he’s got his fingers in that blond hair, and it’s _amazing_, and when the doors out to the patio open, he’s got Lance’s lower lip between his teeth and Lance’s hand on his ass, and he’s pretty sure he’s in heaven.

 

“I found him!” Kris shouts, and Adam looks up, dazed, a little annoyed, a lot pleased with himself.  Katy appears over Kris’s shoulder and hoots with laughter.

 

“Get a room, freak!” she yells, throwing a set of car keys at him.  They’re hers, and Adam laughs as he throws them back. 

 

“I’ve got my own car, thanks,” he tells her, sticking out his tongue.  The one Lance had been sucking on not long before.  The thought makes him go hot all over, and he shivers.

 

Kris rolls his eyes and goes back into the party, dragging Katy along and closing the doors behind them.  Lance’s got his face buried in Adam’s shoulder, and he’s shaking just a little.  Adam pulls back just enough to try to see his face, but Lance follows him.

 

“Are you okay?”  He tries to make his voice soft, tries to sound non-threatening.  Some people just aren’t okay with being caught in public.

 

Lance gasps, and Adam can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying.  He hopes it’s the former. 

 

“That went a lot better than the other time….”

 

Adam buries his face in Lance’s hair and laughs with him, and when he inhales, it’s the most amazing scent of ginger and lime, and he thinks that if he knew where to buy that shampoo, he’d probably stay hard every time his hair fell into his face.  Which would be… all the time.  _Might make shows more interesting._

“Um,” Adam says when Lance doesn’t try to move and his knees start going numb from being braced on the stone bench.  “I really do have my own car.  Unless you… y’know.  Need to stay.”

 

Lance looks up at him then, both hands skimming up Adam’s sides in a way that’s just on the right side of ticklish and makes him shiver.  “I think that depends.”

 

“On?”

 

“How long you plan on staying.”

 

“Only as long as I need to to take you home with me,” Adam says honestly, and Lance’s smile is the widest yet.

 

“_Good_ answer.  Let’s go.”

 

***

 

Adam had fantasies about making it to the bed, because naked and pressed entirely against each other seems like the best thing to be with Lance, but being slammed up against the wall just inside the front door and kissed within an inch of his life is running a close second.

 

…_Especially_ when Lance’s fingers sneak past the waist of Adam’s ridiculously tight pants and tease the skin there, close to where Adam wants him and not quite there.  He whimpers into Lance’s mouth and thrusts his hips toward Lance, hoping he takes the hint, but Lance just slides his hand around back.  His fingers rest under the pants, right on the upper swell of Adam’s ass, and Adam is renewing his thoughts of the bedroom, because while against-the-wall sex is kinda fun, he learned his lesson from trying that with his last boyfriend, who was smaller than him _or_ Lance.

 

“You know,” Adam gasps, breaking away from Lance for just a second, squirming as his tight pants are suddenly starting to feel like a bad decision, “I do have a bedroom.  With a bed and everything.”

 

“Are you saying you want to go there?”  There’s something shy in Lance’s tone that gets all mixed up with his sensuality and turns Adam’s knees to jelly.

 

“Fuck, yes, I want to go there.  With you, preferably.”  He kisses Lance again, short and hard this time, and pulls away to gasp, “Damn, you’re sexy.”

 

Lance laughs and rests his head against Adam’s shoulder like he just can’t walk yet.  Adam knows the feeling. 

 

“Yeah, um.”  Lance turns his head and kisses Adam’s neck, and that’s it, it’s like someone lit a sparkler and replaced Adam’s spine with it.  “So are you.  _Really_ sexy.”

 

Lance starts nibbling on Adam’s neck, and he _really_ hates to interrupt this, but if he doesn’t lie down soon, they’re going to end up in a pile on the floor, and it’s just really not that comfortable.  Plus, his sheets are easier to wash than his carpet.

 

He has a sudden mental flash of Lance wrapped in his sheets, and that’s all the motivation he needs to grab Lance’s hand and pull him down the hall, through the living room, to the bedroom, pointing out rooms as he goes.

 

“Living room, kitchen and dining room, bedroom’s here and bathroom’s connected.  I’ll give you a real tour later if you want.”

 

Lance grins at him, and Adam reaches for the buttons of Lance’s shirt, pausing as he touches them.  “This okay?”

 

“Definitely okay.” 

 

They get tangled up more than once, trying to undress each other simultaneously, but Adam is damn near giddy by the time he skims tight black boxer-briefs down Lance’s legs.

 

Then it’s all he can do to keep from saying something _really_ inappropriate and mood-killing, because what he thinks right at that second is about texting Neil to say, _“Fuck yes, everywhere.”_

What he finally manages to get out is, “Can I…?  I need to…” right before he licks right up Lance’s cock and sucks the head into his mouth.  Lance yelps, and his hands go straight to Adam’s hair.  Adam starts pushing Lance backward, knee-walking with him so he doesn’t have to stop running his tongue over the little sensitive spot right under the head, until they finally get to the bed.

 

Lance collapses onto the edge of the bed, and he’s making delicious little noises in his throat that make Adam want to blow his mind even more.  He pulls off Lance’s cock just long enough to peer up at him from between Lance’s knees, tongue darting out for little licks of the shaft and on down toward his balls.  He can’t help noticing that Lance keeps himself well groomed, and his tongue strays over toward the crease of Lance’s thigh.  Lance twitches at the sensation, but he doesn’t try to push Adam away.  If anything, he’s clutching Adam’s head closer.

 

“I really want to make you come like this,” Adam murmurs against Lance’s skin, and the noise Lance makes is worth every bit of rugburn Adam knows he’s going to have on his knees from this.

 

A little trickle of milky liquid makes its way down Lance’s cock and Adam licks it up before he thinks twice about it. 

 

“Condom,” Lance gasps, and Adam knows he has a point, but blowjobs are pretty damn safe, especially since Adam is pretty sure he doesn’t have any cuts in his mouth.

 

“Do we need one for this?” Adam asks, still nuzzling into the crease of Lance’s thigh.  Anal yes, of course, always.  But oral?

 

“Probably not,” Lance admits.  “But just in case.  I’d hate myself if….”

 

Adam gets it.  He’s had the thought, too, of what he would do if he accidentally got someone else sick.  And it seems like it should kill the mood to have to leave Lance there, sprawled on the bed, pretty cock flushed against his pale belly, but the knowledge that Lance is the kind of guy who’s good enough to stop in the middle of a blowjob and insist on a condom… well.  It just makes Adam want to suck him off even more.

 

He almost hates to roll the condom over Lance’s cock, but he does, and Lance hisses when his fingers reach the base and move up over the skin of his groin.

 

“Pretty,” Adam says, half-teasing, right before he goes back to pretending they never stopped.  The latex doesn’t taste nearly as good as Lance did, but that’s all right.  He’ll make it work.

 

Lance allows himself to fall backward on the bed, hands still clutched in Adam’s hair, and Adam slides one hand up over Lance’s stomach to feel the muscles jump and twitch.  The other he keeps holding the condom at the base of Lance’s cock as he hollows his cheeks, sucking like he’s going to pull Lance’s orgasm out of him by sheer force.

 

That earns him a long, drawn out groan, and he takes a break to move down to Lance’s balls, where he can mouth and lick actual flesh instead of latex, and he fills his mouth with Lance’s flavor to the lovely music of Lance whimpering. 

 

“Shit, Adam, _please_.  I can’t—”

 

And Adam moves up to swallow Lance’s cock whole—or as much as he can, which honestly isn’t as much as he would like—and when it hits the back of his throat, he breathes in through his nose and does his best to keep going.

 

He doesn’t get it all, but he gets enough that Lance sits up suddenly in a move that makes Adam think he must do stomach crunches pretty regularly, and his hands clench in Adam’s hair as he shouts hoarsely and comes.  Adam swallows around the cock in his mouth, imagining that he is swallowing what the condom is catching, and Lance finally falls back, panting like he’s run a marathon.  He gradually loosens his grip on Adam’s head, and Adam feels warm fingers cover his own hand that is resting on Lance’s stomach.  He turns his hand over, and Lance laces their fingers together, smiling down at him over the length of his flushed, sweaty torso.

 

Adam can’t help smiling back, and Lance uses their linked hands to pull Adam up onto the bed, over his body.  Light kisses go deep and lazy, and Adam’s trembling by the time Lance lets him go.

 

“Your turn,” Lance says, and that’s the last warning Adam has before Lance flips him over on the bed and pins him down.  He sits up, straddling Adam’s hips as he strips off the condom.  He winks as he ties the end off and then drops it on the floor.  Adam goes hot and shivery all over, and he’s glad when Lance leans down again to kiss him, trailing kisses from his mouth down his neck and chest and further down.

 

Lance is nice enough to give his cock a few preliminary licks before the condom goes on, although Adam barely feels the latex because Lance is mouthing his balls so gently it’s somewhere on just the right side of ticklish.  Lance looks up at him through a fringe of bangs, and how he still manages to hold onto any innocence of expression is lost on Adam, but he does, and it’s just so fucking _hot_.

 

Adam wants to watch, but his arms are shaking and he’s having a hard time holding himself up on his elbows, so he flops back on the bed and just _feels_.  The latex mutes it little, but not enough to matter _that_ much, especially not when Lance is … oh _hello_!  One of Lance’s hands cups and lifts Adam’s balls, then tickles behind them and rubs firmly across his perineum.  Adam’s thighs jerk and he has to stop from clenching them around Lance’s head because that might make Lance _stop_ and that can _never_ happen.

 

And then there’s some kind of glorious pressure around the head and… did Lance just seriously…?

 

“Oh _God!_”

 

It’s a full thirty seconds before Adam can breathe again, let alone think, and by the time he pries his eyes back open, Lance has taken the condom off him and is sitting beside him on the bed, grinning like a cat that got into the cream.  And, well….

 

Adam reaches up, feeling clumsy and lethargic, and drags the back of his hand down Lance’s bare arm.  “That,” he says, smirking, “was _amazing_.  Thank you.”

 

“It was my pleasure,” Lance says, and there’s still that shyness there that makes Adam want to tie Lance to the headboard and just eat him alive.  And, hey, maybe if they do this again, Adam can bring up that idea.

 

“You don’t have to go yet, do you?”

 

Lance seems to lean into the caress on his arm, and Adam turns his hand so that his palm is cupping Lance’s biceps.

 

“I probably should, at least sometime soon.”

 

Adam hears the wide-open invitation in that and can’t help grinning at Lance.  “But _soon_ isn’t _now_,” he points out, closing his hand around Lance’s arm and tugging.  “Stay here for a little while first.”

 

Lance obliges, stretching out alongside Adam on top of the comforter.  Adam reaches over to the other side of the bed and pulls the rest of the comforter around them, shielding them from the air now that the sweat has started to cool on his skin.

 

Adam is pretty blissed out, finally naked and snuggled up to Lance liked he’d wanted to be since almost the first moment he saw him.  He’s drifting off to a hazy sleep when Lance’s breath stirs his hair as he says, “So you’re a cuddler?”

 

“Mm,” Adam confirms, licking the hollow of Lance’s throat.  “And a non-talker, post-coital.”

 

“Sorry,” Lance whisper-giggles, and Adam couldn’t be irritated with him if he wanted to be.  “I’ll remember that.”

 

Adam smiles against Lance’s skin and kisses him again.  “See that you do.”

 

***

Adam wakes to the sound of his cell phone beeping from his pants pocket on the floor—_where they belong!_—and the feeling of Lance shifting beneath him, checking for his watch.

 

“I need to go,” Lance murmurs, as if speaking loudly would be unacceptable.  “Sorry.”

 

Adam smiles as he stretches, feeling a pleasant languor in his bones.  “Don’t be sorry.  That was amazing.  But could you do one thing for me before you go?”

 

Lance pauses, one leg in his pants, still shirtless.  “Yes?”

 

Adam grins, thinking, _Let me take a picture of you like this_, but instead he says, “Hand me my phone?  It’s in my pants pocket.”  He points toward the floor.  “I would get it, but I think you sucked my spine out through my dick.”

 

Lance laughs, and Adam’s glad that he found that funny and not annoying.  Lance finishes pulling his pants up and zips them over lean hips—Adam really can’t help pouting at that—and fishes in the pocket of Adam’s discarded pants until he comes up with the phone.  He tosses it to Adam and then picks up his shirt and begins buttoning it.

 

Adam thumbs on his phone and grins when he sees that he has four new text messages—one from Neil (of course), one from Kris, one from Katy, and one from… oh no, his mom.  _She’s going to want to know why I haven’t sent her pictures yet._  He peeks over the edge of his phone at Lance, biting his lip as he watches the smooth skin disappear behind Lance’s shirt. 

 

Lance looks up and catches him watching, and there’s a slow, shy grin that creeps over Lance’s face, brightening the sparkle in his eye.

 

“If you’re ever in the neighborhood again,” Adam says, throwing an arm wide in a gesture of welcome.

 

“I’ll look you up,” Lance agrees, leaning over to give Adam a goodbye kiss.  Adam can tell it was supposed to be short, but Lance is an excellent kisser, and _next-time_ promises not withstanding, he’s not sure when he’s going to get this again.  He hooks one hand behind Lance’s head and licks deeper, turning the kiss into something more until they’re both panting and Adam is thinking a little morning-after fun is the best idea going.

 

Unfortunately, Lance really does have to go, a sentiment he conveys with regret as he shrugs into his suit jacket and stuffs the tie into his pocket.

 

“I’ll let you out,” Adam says, starting to sit up.  Lance holds out a hand, his eyes darting down to Adam’s lap, which is barely covered by the comforter.

 

“That’s okay,” he says.  “I can let myself out.  You look comfortable where you are.”

 

Adam _knows_ his grin is the one Neil calls “shit-eating,” and apparently Lance thinks so too, if the wary look on his face is anything to go by.

 

“You’re just afraid you can’t resist the temptation of seeing me naked again, aren’t you?” Adam jokes, and Lance grins and then ducks his head.  It’s so adorable, it’s all Adam can do not to reach out, ruffle his hair, pull him down to the bed and undo all that dressing Lance has just done.

 

“That’s exactly it,” Lance says with a glance out of the corner of his eye.  Another quick kiss, and this time Lance leaves before Adam can make more of it. 

 

As Lance opens the door to his apartment, which Adam can see down a long hallway and across the living room, Adam calls out, “Thank you!”

 

Lance pauses at the door, gives him his own version of a shit-eating grin over his shoulder, and calls back, “Anytime!”

 

The sound of the door closes is far too quiet, not nearly dramatic enough, and Adam flops back on the bed, smiling the goofy smile of the well-laid.  Remembering his text messages, he reaches out for his phone and picks it up again.

 

Neil: _“SO??? Where is this hot piece of ass you promised me?? Less Eurococks and more Ron Jeremy in the light of day, little brother?”_

Adam takes a moment to respond: _“Less Eurococks and more OHGODYES. Also—who you callin’ little, li’l bro?”_

He has a feeling he knows what Neil’s getting at there, but if he goes there, in text, Adam’s going to blow his mind.

 

Next, Kris: _“You didn’t miss much at the party after you left.  You probably had way more fun than we did—before we left, anyway, hehe.”_

Adam snickers and opens Katy’s text.

 

_“Dang, boy, we heard you all the way over here.  Or we would’ve, if we hadn’t been louder. ;) Don’t ever let Kris tell you shopping for those shoes wasn’t worth it.”_

Adam kind of can’t help the way his face scrunches up at that, but he can’t stop laughing.  Oh man, is he ever going to give Kris heck about that now.

 

Then his mom’s: _“Neil tells me you took a porn star home. I told you to buy XL condoms last week, and you didn’t believe me.  Next time you’ll listen to your mother!”_

Before he can decide what, or even if, to reply to that, Neil’s next text beeps onto his screen.

 

_“Little in the ways that TRULY matter! Don’t believe me? I found a pic from one of your concerts. Dude, when they say rock out with your cock out…”  _Adam can feel his forehead wrinkle in confusion, but he scrolls down and finds that Neil has attached a really embarrassing picture of a big-haired arena rocker wearing ripped jeans… and one of the rips is in a very unfortunate place. 

 

Adam laughs for five minutes solid, though he feels a little bad for it, and writes Neil back.  He hates to say it, but he’s pretty sure Neil has won this round.  Next time, though….

 

_“Man, you’d think he’d feel a draft. Although maybe there’s not enough surface area to tell…”_

He forwards the picture to Kris and Katy, just for fun, and then decides that it’s time to get up and get a shower and get a start on his day.

 

When he catches himself smiling at his reflection in the mirror as he brushes his teeth, he just shakes his head and laughs.

 


	2. Just You, Me, and the Stars

Lance is kind of half-listening to the tour guide taking a bevy of hyper, giggling middle-schoolers through the aquarium.  He doesn’t really know why he’s here, even, except that they told him the wrong time for the talk he was supposed to give at Cal State-Monterey and he had a few hours to kill with nothing to do. 

 

He’s staring into a huge tank at a giant octopus—and it’s pretty obvious where the fucker got his name, ’cause all Lance can think is how much he’d like to _not_ go hand-to-tentacle with the monster—when he hears his name called from behind him.

 

“Lance?”

 

The voice sounds vaguely familiar, and the fact that the person is calling him _Lance_ and not _Dustin_ is a pretty good clue that it’s an actual acquaintance and not just a fan (unless it’s one of the crazy fans, and if Lance never gets another pair of underwear from a teenaged girl or boy ever again, it will be too soon).  He turns, prepared to be friendly, but not prepared for the bear hug he gets before he gets more than a glance of spiky black hair and a black leather jacket.  The man is wearing a silver pendant on a leather cord that comes close to putting Lance’s eye out.

 

“Hi!”

 

The greeting is effusive and boyish, more boyish than he previously associated with the person he now recognizes as—

 

“Adam?  What are you doing up here?”

 

“Concert,” Adam says, his eyes sparkling.  “What about you?  Do you live around here?”

 

“No, no.  I’m, ah, a guest speaker at CSU Monterey today, but I’m a little early, so….”  Lance is having a hard time figuring out how he meant to finish that sentence because Adam didn’t quite let him go, and Adam’s fingers are now tracing the inside of Lance’s wrist, making his breath catch in his throat and his brain short circuit.

 

_What the hell?_  It’s not like he’s never been flirted with before, not like this is the first time he had a hot one-night-stand that turned into a repeat hookup, but Adam just oozes pheromones, and it’s like all Lance’s intelligence turns to cheap jell-o in the face of so much raw sex appeal.

 

Adam smiles—and Lance would swear it’s the epitome of what every writer has ever meant by _wolfish_—but before he can say whatever is putting that wicked sparkle in his eyes, there’s a shriek from the middle school munchkins behind Lance.

 

“Oh my _God_, it’s _Adam Lambert!_”

 

“Oh shit.”  Adam looks amused, but he’s also already backing away, his fingers curling around Lance’s wrist now.  “C’mon, let’s make a break for it.  It’ll be fun!”

 

Lance isn’t sure about _fun_, but Adam hasn’t let go of his wrist, so he runs.  Anyway, it would be way too weird to just stand there while a sea of adolescent girls went swarming around him, screaming Adam’s name.

 

Adam’s legs are longer than his, but they’ve both got longer legs than twelve-year-olds, and it’s really not that hard to evade them, especially when they round a corner ahead of the squealing mob and Adam drags him into a room to their left.  Lance barely has time to register that they’re in the men’s room before Adam slams the door shut and braces himself against it.

 

They lean against the door, panting, and listen to the sound of pounding footsteps and squealing girl voices rushing by outside.  When the noises have faded away, Adam looks over at Lance with a thousand-watt grin on his face.

 

“That was so cool.  I feel like a Beatle.”

 

Lance blinks, but he gets the reference and laughs.  “Does that happen to you often?”

 

“Mm,” Adam hedges.  “Not usually in _herds_ like that.  And this is the first time I’ve run from them.”

 

“What, you usually stand still and let them swarm you?”

  
Adam shrugs one shoulder eloquently.  “Well, I had reasons I didn’t want them to today.”  He grins and then tilts his head toward one of the stalls.  “Wanna?  I wouldn’t usually, but it seems like it could be fun….”

 

Lance wouldn’t usually, either, but how many days does he get to run from a screaming horde of fangirls—okay, not his, but still—and then get dragged into a bathroom stall for some quick and dirty sex with one of the sexiest people he’s ever met, and that’s including his porn-star ex?  It’s a day for doing unusual things. 

 

He starts thinking about how good this idea _isn’t_ when they’re both inside the stall, the door locked behind them, trying to figure out how to maneuver two of them in a space meant for one without injuring each other.  Not only could anyone walk in right now, but Lance is pretty sure one of them is going to end up in the toilet bowl at an inopportune moment.

 

Adam is laughing softly by his ear, and it’s a warm sound that makes Lance warm in all the places he wasn’t before—which aren’t many, honestly—and Lance bites his lip and fights back nervous giggles. 

 

“Would it make me a horrible person,” Adam murmurs, “if I suggest we go into the handicapped stall for this?”

 

“Only if there’s someone who actually _needs_ it for disability purposes,” Lance says decisively.  “And if there’s anyone else in here, disabled or not, I’m not going to be advertising where I am anyway.”

 

Adam laughs and turns to open the door, but they stop when the main bathroom door opens.  Adam’s eyes go wide and they stare at each other wildly.  Lance sits down on the toilet seat and pulls his feet up, hoping no one saw him, and they’ve both got their hands over their mouths, trying not to breathe too loudly, trying not to laugh.

 

The sounds outside their stall tip Lance off that it’s the maintenance staff, emptying trash cans, checking toilet paper rolls, wiping off the mirrors.  They’re painfully thorough, and Lance is thinking he might be relaxed enough to rethink this whole questionable tryst by the time they leave, but that’s before Adam takes a half step forward and reaches down, palming Lance’s cock through his pants.

 

And that’s _it, _because they only slept together once, but his cock remembers that touch and remembers exactly how good Adam’s mouth felt wrapped around it.  Any hope Lance head of his other head taking over now is gone, and he’s just hoping the cleaning crew leaves before he does something stupid and gives them away.

 

Lance barely hears the door shut again before Adam is pulling him to his feet, kissing him and pawing at his clothes.  Adam’s got Lance’s pants unzipped and his cock pulled out in half the time it takes Lance’s brain to remember how to speak.

 

“Weren’t we going to move?”

 

“Takes too long,” Adam says, his own pants opening now, and Lance gasps when he feels their cocks press together.  Adam’s a little bit taller, but it’s okay, he just bends his knees a little and he’s on the same level as Lance.  Lance reaches down to help, and they’re kissing again, and Lance can’t think of why they ever wanted more space than they have anyway.  It’s not like they’re _using_ it.

 

Knowing where they are and how easily they can get caught makes it hotter, which is good, ’cause that means Lance is coming faster than he has since he was twelve and found out exactly what he’d wanted to do to that boy he’d had a crush on since first grade.

Adam’s almost as quick off the mark, which is even better, because now Lance doesn’t have to be embarrassed, and he doesn’t have to worry about someone coming back in.

 

They’re both heaving breaths, leaning against each other, Adam’s long legs sprawled on either side of Lance.  Lance can’t help nuzzling in for a light kiss, and Adam turns it deeper, one hand coming up to cup Lance’s face, the other—stained with their cum—held away from him.  Once he’s got his mouth back to himself, Lance tears off pieces of toilet paper and hands some to Adam and keeps some for himself.

 

Once they’re cleaned up, toilet paper flushed away, clothing righted, Adam grins at him, practically glowing with satisfaction.  Adam kisses him again, briefly, and Lance allows himself to stop thinking for just a minute. 

 

“Can I give you my number?” Adam purrs against his mouth, and Lance is thinking Adam can give him anything he really wants to.  “I’d like you to come to my concert tonight, if you want to.  I’d come to your talk, but they need me for sound checks and last minute things.  If I promise to come to the next one, will you come to the concert?”

 

Lance covers his sudden discomfort with a chuckle.  “And risk getting mauled by the girls we just escaped?”

 

“I’ll give you a VIP seat and a backstage pass.”  Adam kisses him again.  “I just really want to see you again.  You’re like… catnip.”

 

Lance laughs, but his hands are shaking when he hands Adam his phone.  “Here. Put your number in.”

 

Adam does, and then Lance hears the _click_ of his phone’s camera, and there’s a tiny flash.  “What…?”

 

Adam holds up the phone so he can see—it’s a picture of Adam’s hand, a spot of semen that he missed while he was wiping his hand stark white against the black polish on his thumbnail.  “So you’ll remember why you want to call me,” Adam jokes. 

 

As if Lance would ever forget.

 

***

 

Lance hates that during his entire talk at CSU-Monterey, he’s thinking about his phone in his pocket and the picture of Adam’s thumb.  He tries to keep his mind on the history of the fight for equal rights and specifically the history of Harvey Milk, but it’s like he can _feel_ his phone like a live coal.

 

After the talk is over and after he’s fielded questions from some very sharp, very bright students and faculty, he’s fidgeting with the phone, debating doing what he knows he wants to.  Adam’s concert starts in twenty minutes.  It’s now or never.

 

_“Hey Adam, is the offer for a seat unbesieged by your rabid fangirls still good? –L”_

Adam must be _sitting_ on his phone, because Lance gets the response almost immediately.  _“Definitely.  Leaving your name and description at the ticket window.  Will try to keep the description to things that won’t get you arrested, but no promises. ;)”_

 

Before Lance can put the phone back in his pocket, it vibrates again.

 

_“P.S. Saving your number in my phone now. Cool?”_

For some reason, the fact that he asked makes Lance’s skin suffuse with warmth, and he smiles.  _“Cool.  Thanks.”_

***

 

The girl at the ticket desk looks bored until he walks up, and then she gives him a curious look like she might know who he is.  She reaches over to the side of her desk, picks up a small piece of paper, reads it, and then looks up at him.  Her eyes go wide, but she remains silent as she gathers the ticket and the backstage pass for him.  She slides it to him under the glass window and says finally, “I loved _Milk_.  It was amazing.”

 

He smiles, even though some part of his head is calculating how long it’s going to take the gossip sites to run speculative headlines about him and Adam.

 

“Thank you,” he says politely, and then he takes his ticket and goes to find his seat.  It’s a small club, really, and he was surprised when Adam told him where it was, because he expected Adam to be playing in a huge stadium.  Somewhere on the way over, though, someone told him that Adam would be with the Idols Live tour going to big cities, big venues later.  This was just a little concert that Adam was doing all by himself.

 

“VIP seating” in this club consists of a box set over to the side of the stage that is a little removed from the rest of the audience, and Lance likes that he’s close enough to be able to really hear and see Adam.

 

He’s heard that Adam doesn’t have one of his own albums out yet, though he’s got a bit of a repertoire from his pre-Idol career, so it’s no surprise that Adam sticks to mostly cover material.  He’s a little outrageous, even more so than he was the night Lance had met him, and if Lance thought he was raw sex appeal before, he’s a walking orgasm when he’s performing.

 

It’s a short set, only an hour and a half, and he does everything from classic rock to soul to bubble-pop, and Lance realizes he didn’t think he would enjoy it as much as he does.  When it ends, he’s on his feet applauding with the rest of the audience, and he puts his thumb and forefinger between his teeth to whistle loudly.

 

He sees Adam’s head turn toward the sound, but he’s pretty sure the spotlights are hiding him.  Still, it makes him grin to think that Adam is looking for him, that maybe Adam knew that was him.

 

It’s such a tiny venue, that after the concert, he doesn’t actually think they’ll ask him for his backstage pass.  When he gets to the door, though, he has to wiggle through an entire sea of girls and boys and some he can’t tell about, most of whom only come up to his shoulders.  He’s digging his pass out to show the security people when Adam comes running up behind the guards.

 

“Lance!”  He reaches out, grabbing Lance’s shirt and pulling him the last few feet out of the sea of adolescent humanity.  He tucks Lance in against his side and waves to the fans who are now screaming and pressing against the rope barriers and the guards on the other side of it.

 

“Thank you!” Adam calls to them, blowing kisses that make the girls giggle and cling to each other, and Lance thinks he sees one of the boys swoon.  Adam keeps his arm around Lance’s middle as they retreat, and Lance thinks it shouldn’t make him feel _quite_ so much like a thirteen-year-old girl… but it kind of does.

 

“I’m so glad you came!” Adam grins as he steers Lance into a makeshift lounge with a ratty couch that Lance is pretty sure was in his dorm’s common area in college and more mis-matched furniture that reminds him of the frat parties, including the one where he got clocked by Jimmy Corrigan’s Delta Nu girlfriend with her designer purse.

 

“You’re really good,” Lance says, feeling shy and hating it.  “I didn’t actually get to watch any of _Idol_ last season, but I heard your name thrown around… now I know why.”

 

“You mean you didn’t before?” Adam grins, wiggling his eyebrows so ridiculously that Lance can’t help laughing.

 

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how you got your votes.”  He kisses Adam lightly, because they’ve been in close proximity for more than sixty seconds without kissing and that’s starting to feel like a tragedy.  “At least, I hope not.”

 

Adam kisses him back, humming.  “Not all of them, anyway.”

 

They’re distracted for a little while, and Lance _knows_ that he’s looking for more in a relationship than a physical connection, but damn, Adam’s a good kisser, and nobody said this was a relationship.  Someone walking through clears his throat, and Lance jumps back a little like his mom just caught him making out on the couch with his first boyfriend—which totally happened, age fourteen—and Adam laughs and leans back a little, putting some space between them.

 

“So how’d your thing at CSU go?”

 

“Pretty good.  I was distracted the whole time, but from what I remember, I think I did okay.”  Lance laughs.  “The questions even stayed on-topic instead of wandering off to what I was doing afterward and if I’d like to go to dinner.”

 

Adam grins, looking like he’d like to have _Lance_ for dinner.  Come to think of it…

 

“Do you get hit on by college kids a lot?”

 

Lance shrugs, a little uncomfortable.  “Some?  Most of the time I get dragged into a corner by a hardcore butch dyke with leather, piercings, and tattoos to talk about the history of Stonewall.  Which is awesome, actually.  I like talking about that.”

 

“But it doesn’t get you laid, as you said.”  Adam’s giving him a secret grin now, eyelashes half-lowered, and Lance wonders if it would be okay to say _That’s okay, that’s what I’ve got you for._  But he’s not sure; they don’t know each other that well.  They’ve met twice, and both times sex was involved, but that doesn’t give Lance the right to say something so proprietary.  Instead, he just doesn’t say anything.

 

Adam’s fingers rub across the nape of Lance’s neck, and he shivers, feeling heat flush into his cheeks. 

 

“Where are you going from here?” Adam asks, and Lance has to think for a second to get the words to make sense.  It’s like his brain just stops working when Adam’s touching him, and Adam doesn’t seem to want to _stop_ touching him.

 

“Home,” he says finally.  “I have—had—a flight to LAX tonight.”  He checks his watch and frowns.  “I think I missed it.” 

 

Adam’s fingers skate down to the collar of his shirt and dip inside, and suddenly missing that plane doesn’t feel like such a horrible thing.  He can _always_ get a flight to LA, and after _Milk_, he’s not hurting for the funds.

 

“I have a flight into LAX myself,” Adam purrs, “but what would you think about driving home?”

 

“Hm?  That’s about five and a half, six hours from here.”

 

Adam nods.  “We could rent a convertible, drive down the One, down the coast all night.”  He smiles, and Lance thinks he could probably tempt angels into hell with that smile.  “I’m wired; there’s no way I’m getting tired anytime soon.  A six-hour drive along the ocean is just what I need.”  Those fingers slide up the side of Lance’s neck now, and Lance is having sudden visions of making Adam park a convertible on a cliff overlooking the ocean and sucking him off right there in the car.  “It would be even better with company.”

 

And that’s when Lance knows exactly how much trouble he’s in, because he’s looking right into Adam’s eyes and there is no other answer in the world that he could possibly give right then, even if he knew they were going to drive off a cliff and die a fiery, watery death in a car crash in the Pacific Ocean.

 

“Yeah, okay.”

 

And Adam smiles.

 

***

 

They do get a car, one of the new Thunderbird convertibles that looks like a space-age version of the classic ones, and the guy that hands them the keys flirts with both of them and once again Lance wonders how long it will take the headlines to hit.

 

_American Idol Adam Lambert and _Milk_ Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black Seen Out and About Monterey._

No pun intended, of course.

 

Adam leaves the top down and pops in a CD that he digs out of his bag.  Lance isn’t sure what he was expecting, exactly, but Nina Simone wasn’t it.  Not that he’s complaining, not at all—it just didn’t seem like what Adam would be carrying around with him.

 

They leave the top down because it’s a perfect summer night, and the salt in the night air, the faint sound of crashing waves threading through the noises of cars passing, and Nina singing about how she wishes she knew how it would feel to be free all tangle together in Lance’s mind.  And through it all, he’s aware of Adam beside him like a warm fire.

 

Adam sings along with Nina, and Lance thinks, _I want to record this, I want to film this.  I want to have it to experience over and over_.

 

Somewhere around San Simeon, he realizes they’ve been holding hands long enough that his fingers feel like they will have permanent indentions from Adam’s fingers, and he turns his head to watch Adam in the light of the moon and the headlights of oncoming cars, which are fewer and farther between now that it’s midnight. 

They’ve moved on from Nina Simone and Etta James to Ziggy Stardust, and somehow it’s still perfect and surreal and feels like it could last forever.  They’ve got four more hours to go before they hit Hollywood where Adam’s apartment is and where Lance will just call a cab to take him home, and suddenly four hours doesn’t seem like long enough at all.

 

It’s ridiculous, he thinks.  They know next to nothing about each other.  Well, Lance knows that Adam was on _American Idol_ and that he came out in _Rolling Stone_—and he would have had to be blind not to see the cover on that magazine, hello—and that he gives amazing blowjobs and is the best kisser Lance has ever met.  But he doesn’t know if Adam even knows who he is or what he does, and he has no idea if they’re going to keep doing this random, run-into-each-other thing and just keep hooking up for sex.  Because it’s not like the sex is bad, not even close, it’s just that Lance is thinking about the best and worst ways this could end up, and he’s not sure which is which.

 

“You’re thinking too hard,” Adam shouts to him over the wind noise, turning just long enough to flash Lance a grin.  “I can hear you all the way over here!”

 

“Sorry,” Lance yells back, grinning and squeezing Adam’s hand tighter.  “Bad habit.” 

 

He tilts his head back and looks up at the sky, and it’s like everything in the world is trying to stitch his heart into this moment so that it will never come out.  There’s a fat crescent moon flirting with a few wispy clouds, and the light pollution means there aren’t that many stars, but this far out, he can see more than he can in LA.  It’s nothing but gorgeous, and Adam’s warm hand in his just makes it better.  It’s like everything he ever fantasized about finding once he stopped being afraid that even just thinking about it was going to make God strike him dead.

 

He feels like God Himself reached into his heart, found that tiny little speck of a selfish dream Lance had never dared to ask for, and unfolded it in front of him like a banquet. 

 

He doesn’t quite sleep, but he drowses a little, and when he wakes up he’s surprised to find that the dream hasn’t ended yet.  It’s still the middle of the night driving down the One from Monterey to Hollywood, still in a car that’s way too cool for him with a guy who is quickly becoming a fixture in Lance’s fantasy life, and the world is still a perfect place that exists only for him and Adam.

 

But Adam is yawning, and Lance sits up quickly, flexing his fingers when he finds out that, at some point, Adam let go of his hand to grip the steering wheel in the ten-and-two position.

 

“Pull over,” Lance says.  “Let me drive.”

 

“I’m fine,” Adam insists through a yawn.  “This was my crazy idea, you go back to sleep.”

 

“What, and let you drive us off a cliff?”  Lance grins.  “Don’t be silly.  Pull over.  I don’t mind driving.”

 

Adam chuckles, but he does, the next time they get to one of those tourist overlooks with a picnic table.  He leaves the car running, but when Lance steps out of the car, he realizes how much he’s needed to stretch.  He can’t keep his groan of relief from escaping when all his joints pop into more comfortable positions, and Adam, who has come around the car to the passenger’s seat, stops and stares at him.

 

“That was a really sexy noise,” Adam observes with a nervous laugh, and Lance smiles, feeling suddenly shy, like he did the first time he picked up a trick in the cheap bar attached to a hotel in Sunnyvale and then left his door open just a crack to make the invitation obvious.  Except that time he was shaking with a mixture of fear that this could go so wrong and his dead, mutilated body would greet the maid the next morning and anticipation that it could go so right and be the missing piece of who he was.

 

It had, of course, been neither—it had been satisfactory, and pleasant, and yes there had been a buzz of _I knew it, I knew I was right about what I wanted_, but it hadn’t made him anything more than what he already was.

 

But the feeling was back, the knowledge of _this could be something that breaks me, or something that lives up to every love story that made me wish I had what they had_.  And of course, the first time, that feeling had lied to him.  There is every possibility it is lying to him again, but that possibility is hard to remember, standing by the Pacific Ocean under a wash of late-night stars, familiar music faintly audible over the crash of waves and the hum of the Thunderbird’s engine.

 

Adam’s staring back at him, and Lance can’t tell in the odd glow, but he thinks the look on Adam’s face might suggest that he’s having the same feeling.  Adam steps into him, a question in his eyes, and Lance opens his stance.

 

It starts out as an embrace, sweet and perfectly fitted together, and then they’re swaying, Lance’s head on Adam’s shoulder, Adam’s arm around his waist, Adam’s other hand holding Lance’s.

 

Adam’s hand comes up and sifts through Lance’s hair, and Lance takes a deep breath.  “Um,” he says, and feels Adam suck in a breath right by his ear.

 

“Yeah, um.  Sorry.”

 

“No—it’s really—don’t apologize.”  He holds Adam tighter for just a second before he backs away.  “It’s just….”

 

Adam grins.  “Yeah, I know.  We’ll save it for later.”

 

“That sounds… yes.”  Lance smiles back, and they pull apart slowly, Adam falling into the seat Lance just vacated and Lance going around to slide in under the steering wheel.

 

They’ve been on the road for thirty minutes before Lance is brave enough to reach over and take Adam’s hand.  They’re still holding hands twenty minutes later when Lance feels Adam’s fingers relax and looks over.  Adam’s asleep, face open and vulnerable in the moonlight, and Lance feels his heart twist in his chest.

 

That indomitable feeling of hope just won’t go away.

 

***

 

It’s just after four o’clock in the morning when they pull up to Adam’s gated neighborhood, and Lance feels bad for shaking him awake.  Adam’s got a little bubble of saliva at the corner of his mouth, and somehow it’s the most adorable thing Lance has ever seen.  He wonders if it makes him a freak that he’d like to lean over and lick it off.

 

Adam wakes up before Lance can give in to his shoulder-demon, though, and looks around sleepily.  “Are we home?”

 

Lance smiles.  “You are, yeah.  I’ve got a few more blocks to go.”

 

Adam shakes his head, rubbing his eyes.  “No, stay.  You can go in the morning.  It’s late, and I kept you up all night.”

 

Lance hesitates. He’s not sure if Adam’s just offering a stopover, or if he’s asking Lance to _stay.  _Adam looks at him cautiously and says, in a much more uncertain tone, “Will you?  Stay?”

 

As if Lance could say no to that.  “Yes.”

 

Adam’s still sleepy as he lets them into the apartment, and Lance is feeling oddly wide awake, despite the fact that he’s been awake for twenty-two hours now with only tiny catnaps.  He trails Adam into the bedroom, and even though he’s been there only once before, it looks familiar and washes him in a sense of relaxation that he usually only feels in his own home.

 

Adam hands Lance a pair of pajama bottoms and starts stripping off with a yawn.  Lance manages to get his shirt off before he just stops and stares.  Adam notices just about the time he gets his own pajamas up over his hips and stops, looking self conscious.  Lance is struck by the difference between this time and the last time they were here.  Oddly, though they know each other better now, they’re shyer than they were the first time.

 

Last time, he didn’t get a chance to look at Adam very closely in the rush of sex and then the rush of leaving.  Now, he’s staring at Adam’s body, and Adam is fidgeting under his perusal.  Lance’s gaze settles on Adam’s stomach, and Adam visibly sucks it in.

 

“I, um, used to be really fat,” Adam says, sounding like he might want to crawl under the bed and hide.  “I haven’t lost all of it—yet—_oh_…”

 

He gasps when Lance spreads his fingers over Adam’s stomach, gently pressing into the flesh.  Adam’s right, he’s not the fittest, firmest physique in the world, but somehow, it makes Lance feel _right_.  It makes him feel like he’s been trusted with the world’s best secret, to be able to see Adam now, half-naked and vulnerable in so many ways.

 

“You’re beautiful,” Lance murmurs, kissing Adam’s jaw.  He moves down and lays butterfly-soft kisses on Adam’s collarbone, his chest, and then pauses just above Adam’s bellybutton.  He spends several moments lovingly caress Adam’s stomach with his lips and tongue, stroking his fingers over the skin.  Adam gasps, and the flesh under Lance’s fingers jumps and quivers.

 

“Lance—_Lance_—”

 

Lance was planning to go lower, but Adam’s hands in his hair aren’t pushing him down, they’re pulling him up.  He stands, wincing at the way his knees protest kneeling on the floor.  He’s barely upright when Adam just _attacks _him, hands clutching his head, mouth open and hungry on his own.

 

“You’re—fuck—God—Lance—”

 

Adam’s urgency skates all up and down Lance’s skin, but he puts his hands on Adam’s jaw, smoothing down over his throat, coaxing him into going slower.  Long, lazy kisses later, Lance breaks away, and he hasn’t felt this embarrassed about sex in ten years, but he can feel himself blushing when he says, “I know you have condoms.  Do you have, um, lube?”

 

Adam stares at him, and Lance is beginning to worry he’s done something wrong when he feels Adam start shaking.  He slides his arms around Adam and holds him tight.  Between soft kisses to Adam’s throat, Lance whispers, “I want you in me.  If that’s okay.”

 

“Oh _God._”

 

“So that’s a yes?” Lance is laughing, but it’s weak and breathless because Adam’s trembling is contagious and he can’t stop shivering.  He’s not sure what this is all about, but maybe it’s because they’re exhausted.  Lance gave a speech, Adam gave a concert, and then they drove home six and a half hours down the coast with barely any sleep between them, and now it’s half-past four in the morning and they can’t let go of each other.

 

Even when Adam spreads him out on the bed and goes for the aforementioned condoms and lube, they can’t stop touching.  It almost makes them fall off the bed, but it would be worth it, because suddenly Lance’s skin aches where Adam isn’t touching it and he’d do anything just to stay together right now.

 

Adam reaches down to help him out, prepared to take his time, but Lance shakes his head.  “I’m okay,” he says.  “I’ll be fine—just—”

 

Adam pauses, laughing a little, but Lance thinks he can see the cracks in his confidence now that he knows what he’s looking for.

 

“Is there something I should know about?” he asks, and yes, Lance sees a mountain of insecurity behind that easy question.

 

Lance grins, rubbing their noses together reassuringly.  “Not unless you want the full, morbid details of my toy collection right now.”

 

This time when Adam laughs, it sounds relieved, and the vibrations travel through Lance too because Adam’s just started pushing inside and _wow, okay, _maybe he wasn’t as ready as he thought.  But it’s all right, it just takes a couple of deep breaths and then the burn is good and he’s groaning, reaching up to clutch at Adam’s shoulders with one hand, his hips with the other, pulling him closer, pulling him deeper.

 

For all their urgency earlier, they can’t seem to move now.  Moving would mean separating, even just a little, and right now they’re just clinging together, trembling and breathing in tandem.

 

When they finally do move, it’s slow, so slow it’s almost painful, and Lance doesn’t know how long it lasts because it seems like _forever_, but by the time Adam’s thrusts pick up speed and force, they’re both sweating and Lance’s throat is raw, his voice hoarse and rough.  He’s dizzy with exhaustion and arousal, and he holds Adam to him with legs and arms while Adam comes deep inside him.  For just a moment, he wishes the condom wasn’t there, but that won’t happen yet.  He knows better, especially now.

 

He tries to work a hand between them to give himself that last bit of stimulation he needs, but Adam’s hand is already there, already pulling in long, firm strokes, and the twist at the head is just _perfect_ because Adam’s still inside him and—oh, _oh_, just like—

 

“Adam!”

 

They lay like that, panting together, until Lance really can’t breathe because Adam’s bigger than he is and he’s heavy.  Lance pushes at him a little, and Adam reaches down to hold the condom on while he slides out.  Lance can’t help gasping at the feeling, and when Adam is done tying the condom and throwing it away, Lance pulls Adam back into his arms and clings, both of them lying on their sides now.

 

Adam’s hands can’t seem to be still on Lance’s skin, and Lance cuddles in as much as he can, weirdly open and vulnerable after that.

 

Just before his eyes close and he drops into exhausted sleep, he sees a thin ribbon of yellow through the window over Adam’s shoulder.  He’s asleep before the sun is over the horizon.

 


	3. You're Doing It Perfectly

Adam has always slept like the dead after good sex, and as fucked-out as he is right now, he should _not_ be awake.  But the sun is in his eyes, and it’s bright, and Lance is between his legs, and _fuck_, how did he miss _that_?

 

Lance’s tongue is hot on his cock, and Adam has a moment of thinking, _What happened to all-condoms-all-the-time?_ before his brain shuts off because there are obviously much more important thoughts to be having.

 

Like none.

 

He isn’t sure he should be able to come, not after the massive orgasm he had _inside Lance_ last night, and definitely not when he’s so fucking tired his dick doesn’t even feel like it can actually do anything but lie there helplessly.  But Lance is patient and so fucking talented, and even desperate need for sleep isn’t enough to keep him from coming when Lance does _that_.

 

He’s just aware enough to know that he wasn’t actually in Lance’s mouth when he came, but when he tries to sit up, Lance pushes him back down.

 

“Shh,” Lance whispers near his ear, and Adam can swear he smells sex on him still.  His cock gives one last half-hearted twitch at the scent.  “Go back to sleep.  Just wanted to say thanks for last night.”  Lance’s hand skates down Adam’s chest and rests on his belly.  It’s an odd echo of that moment last night when Adam really felt like Lance had turned him inside out and then put band-aids on all those invisible scars from being the queer fat kid in high school.

 

He still feels raw and vulnerable now, and he lets Lance go because he doesn’t have the energy—mental, emotional, or physical—to try to call him back right now.  He’s not sure what to do with this feeling, this knowledge that someone has opened him up in ways he wasn’t prepared for.  Fortunately, he doesn’t have to deal with it right now; he can just do what Lance said and go to sleep.

 

And now that he’s got Lance’s number, he can figure out how to initiate contact again when he has a brain that doesn’t feel like it got turned into jelly.

 

There are noises Adam vaguely recognizes but can’t quite place, including a soft rattle that only makes sense when the sunlight in his eyes fades behind the shade Lance just pulled, and then a whisper of a kiss across his forehead just before Lance murmurs “Goodbye” and leaves.  Adam hears the front door open and close softly, and then he doesn’t hear anything else for a while.

 

***

 

He wakes to the sound of _Mama mia, mama mia, mama mia let me go!_ and has a moment of wondering who the hell is blasting “Bohemian Rhapsody” so close to his ear before he remembers that it’s his mother’s ringtone.  The rush of adrenaline when his realizes his mother is calling him—she usually sends him texts or e-mails—has him sitting up in bed and flailing for the phone before he’s fully awake.

 

“What is it?  What’s wrong?”

 

He’s not sure the words come out as English, and his mother’s laughter suggests that it was at the very least very garbled.

 

“I was just calling to say that it’s nice to know you stood us up for such a nice-looking boy,” she says.  “Does he still smell like soap behind his ears?”

 

“Stood you… soap…?”  Finally things click into place.  He’d called his mother last night when he and Lance went to rent the car, telling her they didn’t have to come pick him up from the airport.  He had declined further details, saying that he’d tell her all about it later.  “How do you know what he looks like?”

 

“It’s all over the internet this morning, pictures and everything.”  He can _hear_ her smirk when she says, “I couldn’t decide if it was like looking at the Odd Couple or City Mouse, Country Mouse.”

 

“Mo_ther_.”

 

She laughs.  “He looks very nice.  When do we get to meet him?”

 

That question pops Adam’s eyes open, brings him the rest of the way to consciousness in an instant.

 

“Um…”

 

“Don’t worry,” she continues breezily.  “I won’t let Neil embarrass him with questions about whether his penis is as big as you say it is.”

 

“_Mom!_”

 

The last thing he hears before she hangs up is her bright—evil—laughter.  After the call ends, he checks his phone to see if there are any more messages he needs to know about and maybe to check the gossip sites to see what pictures they have.  Predictably, Neil has sent him a text with a much cruder version of their mother’s conversation.  Katy sent him a text asking if it’s the same guy he picked up at the media party.  Kris’s text is short and playful: _“Two-timer. :-p”  _

 

Adam takes a second to write him back.  _“Pot, kettle, black, baby. :-p”_

 

He pulls up the browser application and checks.  Sure enough, TMZ has the scoop, and Perez Hilton isn’t far behind.  The pictures are innocent and adorable, if dark and blurry—the two of them by the Thunderbird, obviously snapped on someone’s phone camera, Lance going around to get into the passenger’s side, looking across the car at Adam, both of them laughing.

 

A couple of other hastily-snapped phone pictures show them in the car, driving off, still grinning like maniacs.

 

_Lambert and Black—Driving Each Other Crazy?_

Adam rolls his eyes and groans out loud.  “Oh my God.”  He’s tempted to e-mail the site or maybe just post to Twitter that they need to work on their headline-writing skills.  The article mentions that “sources” reported seeing a blond man matching screenwriter Dustin Lance Black’s description with Lambert at the Monterey Aquarium, and then Black had attended Lambert’s concert.  Black was invited backstage, and then later the pair was reported to have been seen renting a car together around ten-thirty that night.  The rest of the article is speculation, pure and simple, but some of it isn’t that far off the mark.

 

They only thing they don’t know is whether this thing is serious, and Adam doesn’t know the answer to that one, either, but it sure as hell felt serious right around five o’clock that morning.

 

He’s staring at the blurry picture of Lance smiling at him like he hung the moon, taking note of the smitten look on his own face, and tracing the edge of the picture with his thumb nail when an alert pops up that he’s got a new text message.

 

He clicks over to open it, expecting Neil or Kris or maybe even his mom with further demands to bring Lance to dinner, and the butterflies in his stomach when he sees Lance’s name on the ID feel like the first night he saw him at the party, times about two or three _billion_.

 

He opens it, and he’s pretty sure his heart just dropped straight through his stomach and landed somewhere in the vicinity of his dick.  It’s a picture of Lance, presumably that morning, looking up at the camera from between Adam’s thighs, spots of Adam’s semen dotting his smug, grinning face.

 

Adam swallows thickly and scrolls down.  Lance has written, _“Happy birthday to me! :) See you soon.”_

“Birthday?”  Adam flips back to his browser and does a quick search.  He’s had a vague idea of who Lance is for a while—his Oscar acceptance speech was pretty widely televised—but he hasn’t done any of the sensible things like, oh, ask for personal information.  Wikipedia, however, is more than forthcoming, and he finds out that today—June 10—is, in fact, Lance’s birthday.  And that he’s a lot older than Adam thought he was.  In fact, he’s thirty-five right this very second.

 

Adam feels a little guilty for finding out all about his background by reading the Wiki article, but there’s a Wiki article—not quite as informative—on him, too, as his brother has already taken great glee in pointing out.

 

“I’m going to edit it to say that you’re an alien and you ejaculate pure glitter,” Neil had crowed one night at family dinner, and their dad had nearly choked on the bread he was eating.

 

“Neil,” their mother had corrected gently.  “It’s not polite to talk about glitter at the dinner table.”

 

Adam flips back to the text message and hits reply. _“You didn’t tell me it was your birthday!  I thought you were supposed to GET amazing blowjobs for your birthday, not give them.  PS. That picture is totally my new caller id for you.”_

He immediately saves said picture to his phone and sets it to Lance’s number, remembering the tug of those lips on his dick that morning and wishing like hell he’d been more awake for it.  He grips his phone, smiling sleepily, watching he screen as he waits for a return message.  He feels like he’s thirteen, suffering through his first serious crush on a classmate, secretly thrilling every time the boy said hello or remembered his name.

 

But this time it’s better because he’s not just imagining what it _would_ be like, making out with the back of his hand and imagining how different it would feel if his hand could kiss him back.  This time he knows that Lance kisses him like it’s going to save both of their lives, like the world is ending and their mouths together are the one bright moment of perfection in the middle of the apocalypse.

 

It takes Lance a while to answer, and by the time he does, Adam’s starting to get that horrible twisty feeling in his stomach like maybe he’s being ignored.  But the picture comes up with the text, and it goes a long way toward alleviating that sensation.

 

_“Don’t worry, I’ll get more birthday presents out of you later. ;)  Last night was a very good start.”_

Adam barely stops himself from making an embarrassingly high-pitched sound at that, though there’s no one present to hear him.  When he gets up and staggers into the shower, ready to hit the studio and work on one of the post-_Idol_ singles, he can’t stop humming, and by the time he’s halfway there, driving the Thunderbird since he hasn’t taken it back yet, he’s singing along to some truly awesome lyrics in his head.

 

He tries to ignore the fact that he wants to call Lance, sing them to him, and see what he thinks, but he can’t stop himself from checking his phone just in case.

 

***

 

Two days later, he’s in the studio, in the zone, getting this song right piece by piece, bar by bar, when his cell phone practically explodes, text message alerts tripping over each other in an effort to tell him people were trying to talk to him.  It’s not the first time he’s gotten a lot of text messages, but it’s unusual enough that he stops to take a look at his phone just in case it’s an emergency.

 

He doesn’t understand Kris’s and Katy’s, both variations of asking if he’s okay.  His mom’s says, _“You ARE using condoms, right?”_ and that’s even more confusing until he opens Neil’s.  _“So there are pictures of your new boyfriend in flagrante delicto all over the internet.  Just so you know.”_

 

The bottom drops out of Adam’s stomach.

 

Neil sends another one, and Adam opens it cautiously.  _“You weren’t kidding about the Eurococks thing.”_

Adam’s brain crashes and he knows he’s not getting another word written on this song.  The first thing he does is bring up Lance’s number and send him a text.

 

_“omg I just heard! Are you ok?”  _He pauses, not sure how to say what he’s thinking without sounding wrong.  _“It wasn’t me, btw.”_

Lance’s response is quicker than Adam would have strictly expected.  _“I know it’s not you.  I know who it was.  I’m sorry.”_

The apology pulls the rug out from under Adam’s feet, and he realizes that, obviously, if it wasn’t him… it was somebody else.  For a minute, he’d thought that somehow, someone had gotten pictures of _them_ having sex, maybe in the bathroom at the aquarium, but now he realizes that no, the pictures are of Lance having sex with someone who isn’t him.

 

Suddenly, all those safe, warm memories from the other night feel cold and comfortless.  He feels stupid and young and naïve, thinking that just because they’d fucked, just because they’d driven all night and fallen asleep in each other’s arms while the sun was coming up meant something.  He should have known better. He should have—

 

“Adam?  Is everything all right?”

 

He’d forgotten about his band.  He looks up from his phone, realizing that his hands are shaking.  He gives them the closest thing to a smile he can dredge up and says, “Let’s take a break, guys.”

 

He doesn’t smoke because it ruins his voice, ruins his breath control, but he’s never wanted a cigarette like he does right now.  He doesn’t take one, just goes off into one of the unused rooms and opens the browser on his phone.  Where should he even go to look for them?

 

TMZ points him to Perez Hilton’s blog—eerie sense of déjà vu, that—and there they are, in uncensored living color.  Lance looking up sweetly at the person holding the camera, Lance nuzzling between the dude’s thighs, Lancing holding—

 

He closes the browser out with an angry punch of buttons and does his best to just keep breathing.  Suddenly his mom’s question makes sense; Lance and his boy wonder were bareback in those pictures.

 

He flashes back to the first night he’d brought Lance to his apartment, the nervous bite of his lip, the _“Just in case.  I’d feel horrible if…”_  Adam had thought he was talking about he’d feel bad if he got _Adam_ sick.  He hadn’t thought about the possibility that Lance was saying he’d feel bad if he got his _boyfriend_ sick from a one-night-stand.

 

He feels so fucking stupid and just a little bit—or a lot—heartbroken, because he’s not sure when it happened, but he was starting to think he and Lance had something, or were starting to have something, or at least _could_ have something if they wanted to.  And now he doesn’t know. 

 

Now he doesn’t know how he could possibly try to have something with Lance when he’s fucking someone else.

 

Angry, trembling, he thumbs on his phone and sends Lance a curt message.  _“So I guess this means we’re done.  Except I guess we never really started.”_

He puts his head down on his arms and takes deep breaths, doing his best not to cry.  He knows he should text his family back, knows he should tell Kris and Katy he’s okay, but he doesn’t _feel_ okay, and he doesn’t know what to tell them.

 

He feels an arm on his shoulder and looks up.  Tommy, one of his friends who has played in some of Adam’s bands pre-_Idol_, is giving him that sympathetic look that used to make Adam wish _so hard_ that Tommy was actually gay.  It’s the look that sees right through him and makes him feel like he’s not alone.

 

“I have some bad fucking luck, babe,” he says to Tommy.  “Straight guys and guys who aren’t single.  Sometimes both.”

 

Adam’s phone beeps with a text message, but he refuses to look right now.  Tommy’s rubbing his back and leans into him, head resting on his shoulder.

 

“What happened?”

 

Adam picks up his phone, ignores the text message from Lance—he’s going to have to delete that picture now—and opens the browser again.  It’s still pointed to Perez’s site, and he hands it over.

 

“That’s the guy I’ve been seeing.”

 

Tommy looks at it for a minute, scrolling down the page.  Adam feels a small ping of jealousy that Tommy’s looking at pictures of Lance naked, but then by now, the whole goddamn internet has probably looked at pictures of Lance naked.  And getting fucked.  By someone who isn’t Adam.

 

“He’s cute,” Tommy says cautiously.  “So he’s still with this guy?”

 

“What do you mean, ‘still with’?” Adam grouses.  “The pictures just went up today.”

 

Tommy turns the phone around so he can see.  He doesn’t want to look, but obviously there’s a reason Tommy wants him to look at them again.  “These were taken three years ago, baby boy.”

 

Adam blinks, sits up, and snatches the phone back.  He actually bothers to read the post now—he’d skipped before, when he’d seen the sentence, _“So any news on how the fabulous Glambert is taking this shocker??”_—and sees that Tommy is right.  The date on the pictures very clearly shows a timestamp from three years ago.

 

“Oh my God,” he says, remembering the text he just sent Lance.  He opens Lance’s reply, already wincing before he reads it.  It’s much calmer than he expected, actually.

 

_“I’d like us not to be done, but if you want to be, I understand.”_

He can’t reply fast enough.  _“No!! I don’t want to be done either!! I’m so sorry, I thought those pix were recent. I thought you were cheating on someone with me. Forgive me? :(”_

He can breathe a little easier now, and he looks over at Tommy with a smile.  “Thank you, baby,” he says.  “I’ll be back in the recording room in just a minute, okay?”

 

Tommy grins and reaches out to ruffle Adam’s hair, which makes him laugh and duck away.  “We’ll be waiting for you.  Get ready to bring it!”

 

While he’s waiting for Lance to write him back, he takes a moment to text Kris, Katy, and his mom to tell them yes, he was fine; it was a long time ago; of course they’re using condoms.  He hits reply to Neil’s text and stares at the empty screen for a minute, but he can’t think of anything snarky to say.  He’s a little too raw from that rollercoaster.  In the end, all he says is, _“Thanks for being there.”_

He means it sincerely, but he’s pretty sure Neil will take it as a joke.  That’s all right.  Either way, it means they love each other.

 

His phone beeps again.  It’s another message from Lance.  The twist of nervousness still hasn’t completely gone away, but it no longer feels like someone is trying to cut his stomach out of his abdomen without anesthetic.

 

_“Of course you are. I’m really sorry you had to deal with this. Some people think that scruples are money in Russia.”_

Adam stares at the text, and he can feel his grin making his face light up. _“Did you seriously just quote Sabrina at me?”_

_“Sorry I’m no Audrey Hepburn, but you’re not exactly Humphrey Bogart yourself. ;)”_

Adam laughs, more pressure lifting off his chest.  _“I think that line was only in the remake, Audrey.  I’ll be Harrison, thanks.”_

He takes a deep breath, still feeling a little shaky, but at least his world’s not coming apart.  And what was that about, anyway?  He’s known the guy for two weeks, and just barely that.

 

He’s on his way back to the recording room when Lance’s next text comes.  Adam loves that he keeps messaging him; it feels like those silly phone calls that end with “You hang up!” “No _you_ hang up!”  It feels good.

 

_“I’m pretty sure Harrison was an asshole in that movie.  And you’re definitely not that.  Thank you for not totally freaking out on me.  You’re amazing.”_

Adam just melts.  He’s standing at the door of the recording room now, and his band is inside.  He gives Tommy a thumbs-up through the glass window in the door and takes a second to reply.  _“I’ve got to go back to recording now so I’m turning my phone off.  I’ll call you when we get done if it’s not too late, if that’s okay.”_

He turns his phone off before Lance can say anything else because otherwise he’s never going to get any work done, and right now he really wants to finish that song.

 

***

 

By the time he leaves the studio, it’s one in the morning, and he’s sorry he probably won’t get to talk to Lance anytime tonight.  It’s late for normal people.  Then again, Lance is the creative type, too.  Maybe…

 

He turns his phone on, scanning the text messages.  The usual suspects, all glad to know he’s okay.  And two from Lance.  His heart double-thumps and he opens the earliest one.  It’s from right after he turned his phone off.

_“Good luck on the recording.  You’ll be awesome.  I loved hearing you sing the other night.”_

The second one is from just over an hour ago.  _“Still awake, thinking about you.  It’s been a crazy few hours.  I had to make a statement fast and I had to figure out exactly what to say.  I think I did okay, but wow am I tired.  Hope you’ll be done soon.”_

Adam re-reads that one a few times before he hits dial, biting his lip against unexplainable nervousness as the phone rings.

 

“Hey.”

 

The voice on the other end of the phone does sound tired, but he also sounds happy.  It makes Adam feel warm and content.

 

“Hey yourself.  Busy day for you, huh?”

 

“Oh my God, you have no idea.”  Lance laughs.  “I think the worst part is that my mother saw them.  I spent thirty minutes on the phone with her telling her that yes, I was being safe, and no, I didn’t go around having condomless sex with strangers.”

 

“I can call her and vouch for you if you want,” Adam offers with a grin, but that has been bothering him, that picture of Lance so clearly unprotected.

 

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” Lance chuckles.  “I can’t believe he decided to sell those.  We’d been dating for a while, we were on the trust system.”  He sighs.  “I want _you_ to know I don’t just go around fucking strangers without condoms.  Most of the time, I’m not fucking people at all.”

 

Adam can’t stop the little relieved laugh that comes out more as a sigh.  “I know what you mean.  It’s been a while since I was… with… anyone.  Like this.”

 

He’s put himself out there now, and he stops walking, just stands still on the sidewalk outside the studio with his eyes squeezed shut and his lower lip between his teeth and waits.

 

“Yeah.”  Lance’s voice is soft, shy.  “Me too.”

 

Adam lets out his breath and opens his eyes, looking up at a sky that is mostly black, the waxing moon and one especially bright star the only things visible past the streetlights.  Tommy walks past him, giving him a curious look and mouthing, “Okay?”

 

Adam grins, winks, and blows him a kiss, then makes the OK sign with his fingers.  Tommy gives him a thumbs up and continues out to his car.

 

Lance clears his throat quietly and Adam realizes he’s been standing there, just listening to him breathe.  “So, um.  Are you done for the night?”

 

“Yeah, I’m probably going to just head home and crash.”

 

Lance is quiet again, and Adam holds his breath, waiting for… something.

 

“You could, um, crash here.  If you want to.”

 

Waiting for _that_.  Adam is grinning so hard his face hurts when he says, “I want to.”

 

***

 

Lance tops just as awesomely as he bottoms, and Adam is boneless with contentment in the afterglow by the time three o’clock rolls around.  He’s a little sore, ’cause it’s been a while since he’s done that, but it was well worth it.  They were awkward for the first few seconds after Adam walked in the door, but when they both started apologizing at the same time, they couldn’t help laughing, and after that it just didn’t seem like such a big deal.

 

Now they’re lying together, drowsy, drawing patterns on each other’s skin just to have an excuse to keep touching even though they both came so hard that Adam doubts either one of them will be getting it up again anytime soon.  Maybe when they wake up in the morning they can have sleepy, spooning-sex.  Adam thinks he wouldn’t mind waking up for that.

 

“So,” Lance says, and there’s enough hesitation in his tone that Adam tenses.  Fifty worst-case scenarios run through his head all at once, at the top of them being, _I lied, I really am still seeing that guy_ and _I was wrong, I don’t actually want this with you anymore_.  The guy in the photos had a much trimmer physique than Adam does, and Adam knows Lance said it doesn’t matter (actually, he just said “You’re beautiful”), but damn do old insecurities die hard.

 

“So?” Adam finally asks when he just can’t take the suspense anymore.

 

“I’ve been invited to speak at an event tomorrow.  Lifeworks.  I don’t know if you’re doing anything, but I’d like it if you’d come.”  Lance isn’t looking at Adam, won’t meet his eyes.  Adam can’t figure out how to make his brain form words.

 

Mostly, he’s trying to keep himself from saying something that will completely push Lance away or crush him—damn, he’s had a hard day—but all he can think is, _I don’t want to be political.  I just want to sing._

“I’ll, um, I’ll have to see,” Adam hedges.  “What time is it going to be?”

 

Lance already sounds crestfallen, but he tries to hide it when he says, “I’ll have to double-check, but I think around six?”

 

“Okay.  I’ll… I’ll let you know?”

 

“Sure,” Lance says, and even though he doesn’t stop touching Adam, he withdraws, just a little.  It’s tangible in the tension of his body, the sudden spots of coolness against Adam’s skin where before there was warmth.  Adam feels horrible, but he can’t just promise something like that when he doesn’t know if wants to go.

 

He knows he doesn’t want to be the guy whose career turns into a platform for political activism.  Sure it works with Bono, but Adam’s got to _have _a career before he can use it as a platform.  It’s too early.  He didn’t do this so he could be a figurehead, a spokesperson.  He did it because he wanted to sing.  Being gay doesn’t have anything to do with that except that he’ll be singing about boys instead of girls in his love songs.

 

They fall asleep together, but when Adam wakes up in the middle of the night, Lance is on the other side of the bed from him and Adam just feels like shit.

 

***

 

They part in the morning, a little coolly, even though they kiss goodbye at the door.  It’s not the kind of bone-melting, soul-searing kiss they’re used to, and Adam can’t help feeling like it’s his fault. 

 

“What’s the address?” Adam asks, halfway down the steps, desperate to break through that protective wall in Lance’s eyes.

 

Lance leaves him standing there waiting while he goes inside to find the invitation, to find the address, and Adam enters it into his phone along with a note and sets a reminder.  He isn’t sure he’ll go, but he’ll damn well punish himself by feeling guilty over it if he doesn’t.

 

He spends the day—a perfectly awesome Saturday—with his family.  His parents went to services that morning for once, but Neil slept in like the lazy cad he is and Adam… well, Adam knows where he was, and it wasn’t anywhere near services.  The last look he’d seen on Lance’s face was worth twice the guilt of not going to temple, though, especially when it’s not like he’s ever been a regular attendee anyway.

 

Apparently, he’s as transparent as ever, because his dad pulls him over to the side, hands him a vodka-and-cranberry, and says, “All right, what’s going on?  Your mother said you and… what’s his name?  Dustin?”

 

“Lance,” Adam corrects.  “He goes by Lance.”

 

“Lance.  She said you were doing all right after… well.”

 

“It’s not that,” Adam says, taking a long swig of his drink.  He’s down to a little pink ice in two swallows, and his dad just upends the vodka bottle into his glass.

 

“What is it, then?”

 

“He’s got this—thing.  This rally or something he’s speaking at.  He wanted me to go.”

 

Adam can feel his father’s eyes on him, heavy and evaluating, but the silence drags on.

 

“It’s not that I don’t want to go, it’s just that I don’t want to be the new poster boy for gay rights, you know?  I just want to be me, not this person with mountains of responsibility to the world to be the ‘model homosexual.’”

 

His dad makes a thoughtful noise and nods, pouring more vodka for both of them.

 

“But fuck.  He looked so sad.  And I feel like such a douche because his fucktard of an ex-boyfriend was awful to him yesterday, and it was just his birthday, and now I won’t go watch him give a speech because I’m scared of responsibility.”

 

“Son.”  It’s the dad-voice, the one that always makes Adam feel like he’s five years old and his dad knows the meaning of the whole universe.  “Nobody can make you be something you don’t want to be.  You’re going to disappoint people one way or the other.  The only thing you can do is to do your best not to disappoint yourself.”

 

Adam thinks about that for a second, staring into his vodka which has only the faintest memory of cranberry juice now, and then puts his glass down on the counter to hug his dad tight. 

 

“Thank you,” he says right before he runs into Neil’s room.

 

“HEY!  What are you doing in my room, buttmunch?” Neil yells just as his dad calls from the other room, “Are you going to drink this…?”

 

***

 

Neil’s clothes don’t fit Adam exactly right, but they’re also very _Neil_ and not very _Adam_, and that’s exactly what he wants.  Hair pulled out of his makeup-less face and tucked under a low-pulled baseball cap also helps, and sunglasses are totally excusable in mid-June California.

 

He doesn’t think anyone recognizes him, although a few people give him long, curious glances, like they’re trying to decide if they know him from somewhere.  Or maybe they just think he’s hot.

 

Lance is standing a few feet away from the makeshift stage, looking a little uncomfortable in a full suit and tie in the summer heat.  He’s smiling, but Adam can see the tension in his shoulders and wonders if it’s there because of him.

 

He pulls out his cell phone and sends a quick message, then slides it back into his pocket.  Lance jumps a few seconds later and excuses himself from the conversation to reach into his jacket and pull out his phone.  Adam watches him, holding his breath as Lance’s expression goes from consternation to surprise to caution.  His thumb moves, and Adam thinks that must mean he’s opened it.

 

Immediately, his head snaps up and he scans the crowd.  He’s at such an angle, though, Adam’s not sure he can see him.  If he can, it’s a fair bet that he doesn’t _recognize_ him.  Before he can see him, everyone is called up on stage, and Lance is handed the microphone.

 

He seems nervous, a little giddy, and Adam swallows a laugh.  He’s wearing Chucks with his suit, and it might just be the most adorable thing Adam’s ever seen.  Adam’s a little dizzy and his ears are buzzing through the whole thing.  He’s not sure whether to blame it on the heat, Neil’s jeans that are the most uncomfortable thing he’s worn since support hosiery, or how amazing Lance is right that second.

 

So shy and so brave, baring his entire soul and history to a crowd of strangers, doing it to try to expand the small space in the world where kids like him—kids like Adam—had a place to be safe, a place to be themselves without the heavy threat of hatred that the world holds over them.  It’s everything Adam has wanted to do, just in a different way, in a different venue. 

 

And when it’s done, and they’re handing Lance his award and taking photo after photo, Adam takes off his sunglasses and applauds with everyone else, and Lance finally sees him from the stage.  Adam knows the second Lance recognizes him, because there’s a happy little smirk that looks like it’s just dying to be a full-blown grin, and the heavy stone of guilt that’s been crushing Adam since he went to sleep last night is finally gone.  He can breathe again.

 

Finally, the actual ceremony is over and now Lance is just shaking hands with people, listening politely as one person after another comes up to him, bursting with the need to tell _their _stories, to find their validation.  Lance is patient and genuine, his attention focusing on them while they’re talking, giving candid responses and support.

 

Adam is so glad he came, so glad he saw this.  Any doubts he’d had about whether Lance was all-around awesome or just good in bed are starting to slink away to the background now.  There’s a moment when no one is talking to Lance but he’s trapped by the crowd when he pulls out his cell phone and looks like he’s sending a text.  Sure enough, a second later, Adam’s cell phone beeps.

 

Just about that time, a girl who looks like she’s about sixteen, holding the hand of another girl about her age, approaches Lance, looking scared to death, like a dog that’s used to being beaten.  She’s crying, trembling, and Lance reaches out to her, one hand on her arm, bending closer to her to hear what she’s trying to say.

 

Adam can’t hear her from this far away, but whatever she says makes Lance’s face go open and sympathetic, and he asks her something.  When she nods, he pulls her into his arms, hugging her carefully.  Her friend or girlfriend or sister or whatever stands behind her, one hand up to her face, sniffling as she watches the meltdown in front of her.

 

Lance holds her for a little while, talking soothingly to her, and then she leaves, looking a little embarrassed but utterly grateful.  Adam makes his way through the crowd, excusing himself politely and ignoring any whispers of recognition until he’s standing right in front of Lance.

 

“Hi,” he says, and Lance blinks, smiling at him.

 

“Hello.”

 

“So, I’ve got this problem.  There’s this guy I’ve just met, but he’s incredibly nice.  He’s so nice, nice is jealous of him.  He’s sweet and funny and sometimes when I’m around him, I have trouble remembering to breathe.  But I’ve let him down a couple of times in the past few days, and I’m not sure what to do now.  I want him to know that even though this is really, really new, and even though I haven’t done this much and I’m not sure I’m very good at it, I’d like to see where things take us, and I’d really like it if he wanted that, too.”

 

Lance opens his mouth and says, “I…”  Then he shakes his head and steps forward, kissing Adam in that perfect way, that way that makes Adam think the world might be burning down around them and he’d never know it, that the whole universe might cease to exist and Adam would never miss one tiny part of it as long as Lance keeps kissing him just like this.

 

Gradually, Adam becomes aware of the raucous applause and catcalls echoing around them and pulls back, lifting his hand in a playful _thank you, thank you very much_ gesture.  Lance is laughing, and when Adam looks back at him, Lance’s smile goes soft and he tilts his head.

 

“Yeah,” Lance says.  “He wants it too.”

 

Almost an hour later, as they’re driving back to Lance’s place, Adam says, “You know my mother wants to meet you.”

 

Lance darts a quick gaze at him, startled, and then says, “Are you okay with that…?”

 

Adam thinks of his family, crazy and lovable, and thinks of the kind of hijinks they’re sure to get up to when Adam brings a boyfriend home.  Adam laughs.  “Yeah, I am.  It could be fun.”

 

“All right,” Lance says.  “If you’re sure this isn’t some elaborate plot to get rid of me.”

 

Adam laughs again, feeling so incredibly light and free he’s not sure what to do about it.  He pulls out his phone to text his mother—she’s going to be over the freaking _moon_—and sees the text Lance sent him at the event, the one he’d forgotten to check.

 

Below Lance’s message is a copy of the one Adam had sent him:

 

_“I came.”_

Above it is Lance’s reply: 

 

_“Not as much as you’re going to when I get you home.”_


End file.
